Fundamentals of Multiscale Modeling of Structural Materials

Wenjie Xia is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, North Dakota State University (NDSU). He obtained his PhD from Northwestern University, and prior to joining NDSU he was an MGI-CHiMaD (Materials Genome Initiative- The Center for Hierarchical Materials Design) Fellow at National Institute of Standards and Technology from 2016-2018. His research interests lie in understanding the complex behaviors of structural materials via bottom-up predictive modeling and data-driven approaches for design and prediction of their performance in engineering applications. He and his group have developed multiscale modeling tools and established innovative materials-by-design frameworks to facilitate design and development of high-performance multifunctional materials. He has authored over 30 peer-reviewed papers, mostly on the topics of computational materials and nanoscale science. Luis Ruiz Pestana is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering at the University of Miami. He obtained his PhD in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Northwestern University, and prior to joining University of Miami he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Chemical Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Pitzer Center for Theoretical Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an expert in a variety of molecular simulation techniques ranging from density functional theory to ab initio, classical, and coarse-grained molecular dynamics. He has organized and chaired multiple symposia at international conferences in molecular and multiscale modeling of materials and has published numerous articles in influential peer- reviewed journals.